Last Saturday the Mufti Council of Russia, the Mufti Council of Kazakhstan and the Mufti Council of Belarus founded the Eurasian Union for Halal products standardization and certification. Kyrgyzia is about to join the Union. According to Aydar Gazizov, the head of the Eurasian Halal Union, the chairman of the Russian Mufti Council, "Today in Russia alone Muslims are represented by 57 different ethnic groups. There are residents of Caucasian republics, Tatars from Kazan, Penza, Nizhniy Novgorod… So I would like to stress that Halal is a notion that unites us, and not only the Muslims (the Tatars, the Chechens and so on), but also all those people who have noticed Halal products because they are of the highest quality. You know that some particular products are dangerous for your health, and there is a special level of control on Halal-producing factories, so it allows us to say that… I’m not trying to reproach anyone, but I’ll repeat that our products undergo special controls, and I know there are some people who say that ‘they won’t try to feed bad stuff to their fellow-Muslims'."
As Aydar Gazizov said, the Union is in the process of creating a new inter-regional public organization for protection of the rights of Halal consumers. ‘We would like this new society to be able to protect the rights of Halal consumers not only in Moscow, but also in all regions of our country. I believe this project will be a success. I would like to stress our tolerance once more: we want to protect the rights of all Halal consumers, Halal for us is a project that should unite all ethnic groups, all religious groups of our country as well as of the post-Soviet space, and we’re working on it,’ – he explained.
Among our foreign colleagues Aydar Gazizov named Malaysia as the leading country, which was the first one to treat this problem systematically and has state programs related to Halal, and there are also the states of the Persian Gulf, for example, Saudi Arabia. ‘Malaysia marks almost all products as Halal, we’ve seen this on our Moscow Expos: there are Halal cookies, water… all the things that seem to be Halal a-priori. But today we have to be careful: there are a lot of colourants, emulsion stabilizer and so on, which are unhealthy and forbidden. So we have to certify almost all products. There are factories with our certificates that produce cosmetics, medical products, even clothes. There are special standards of clothing for Hajj or for prayers. So Halal is the broadest industry, and we merely follow in the steps of our foreign colleagues.
‘I would also like to add that we are working on a so-called ‘Halal Map’ for Moscow and Russia. We describe all the restaurants and cafés which serve Halal (they are mostly oriental). In some of them all food is Halal, like in the establishments of our colleagues from ‘Halal Ash’, there’s no alcohol there. We want to create a certain ‘light signal’ rating for such restaurants: ‘green light’ for those who serve 100% Halal food and who follow Halal in all other aspects; “yellow” for those restaurants where all food is Halal and is certified by us, but at the same time owners allow alcohol trade, or calabashes, or some entertainments like belly-dancing, which is improper from a Muslim point of view. And the ‘red light’ indicator is given to the traders who pretend to trade Halal even though they have no certificates, they only write ‘Halal’ on their hand-made banners and then hide them when we come to check up on them. Some of them regularly escape our inspections. We put these traders on our ‘black list’ and publish it on the internet so that all upright Muslims or members of other religious groups knew about the fraud (and you know that we all, Muslims, Jews and Christians, are members of one religious family as we believe in One God). And I would like to remind you that there’s a whole segment of consumers who choose Halal not out of some religious concerns, but for its high quality, and we feel our responsibility to them as well. It is a great responsibility and we understand it’.
Answering the question on the possibility of Halal menu in aiports and flights, Aydar Gaziziov said that ‘we’ve been negotiation with companies working at the Domodedovo airport for a long while now, unfortunately, without any considerable success. You’re right, a lot of foreign air-companies offer Halal menu, as well as some companies working in Moscow. Our enterprises work in this direction, but there the issue of economical reasonableness. We’ve been trying to cooperate with our State Railroad Company in this area, but they’ve offered us evidence that there are not enough potential consumers. The companies regard the issue from economical point of view: is it profitable or not. In business humanitarian aspects are not in the first rank of priorities. But I think we’ll soon succeed in this area as we ask all our fellow-Muslims or other supporters of Halal to ask about Halal menu while booking tickets. We hope that this way we’ll show to the travel companies’ marketing departments that there is a demand for such type of services’.
‘I would also like to point out that we work with the Pinkhas Company, which specializes in producing food for our brothers – Jews. You probably know that for Muslims, Christians and Jews the permissible food is almost the same. We are all ‘the people of the Book’, people of the Holy Writ, and we, Muslims, can eat meat slaughtered according to Christian and Judaic rituals. There’s no secret about this rituals, so let me explain them to you in a couple of words. These rituals imply humane attitude towards the animals: slitting their throats in one swift move, one animal shouldn’t see the other being slaughtered (there are special screens in the slaughterhouse and the lights are dim); animals are not slaughtered in some barbaric way, like smashing their heads (I’ve graduated from Meat and Milk Institute myself, and I know that there used to be a special profession – hammerer. These people smashed the poor animals’ heads with sledgehammers while the flock was being driven between them) or using electricity. All this is strictly forbidden. It is an issue of humanism. Yes, the Almighty created animals to satisfy our needs in nutrition, clothing and medications, but in no way He gives us right to treat his creatures in a barbaric manner. This is the essence of our animal slaughter principles. I believe that some time ago, when villagers slaughtered even a hen they used to say ‘God be with us!’, but now all these traditions are destroyed by fast production, by the principle ‘time is money’. You know what we get in the end: blood isn’t being drained from the carcass completely, and you know that blood is a pathogenic zone, it is where the ‘hormone of fear’, adrenalin, is concentrated after the animals’ adrenal glands secretes it. And we and our children have to eat that meat… During our recent meeting with our Kazakh colleagues I mentioned that we are doctors (although I myself don’t pretend to be more than a nurse boy), we heal people by improving their food standards’.
Commenting on the allegedly high prices on Halal products the head of the Eurasian Halal Union said that he would have agreed with that assessment if it was referring to Kosher food. ‘These products are really 2 – 2.5 times more expensive than their regular analogues. Why? Because Judaism has higher standards of what is allowed: you know that they eat only the front part of livestock carcasses, the rear part is not Kosher. Among 100 animals they can choose only 15-20 only by their exterior standards. And after the slaughter there are other tests for the carcasses being Kosher. You should know (and if I’m mistaken my colleagues from the Judaic community who are present here will correct me) that the menaker is a much honored person, almost more important that the rabbi. So you see why the prices here are high. But as for the Muslim food, there are some companies (I won’t name them) whose products re much pricier – they are 10-15 rubles more expensive than their analogues. But in general Halal plants, say, ask 72-73 rubles for a kilo of chicken meat while its usual cost is 70 rubles. It is normal, I think. This difference in price can be justified by the fact that we have special experts who monitor the slaughter process. Some producers prefer to make special packing, which also increases the price. We could discuss it here, especially when a lot of respected women are present here who probably go to stores more often than we do. But we don’t get a shower of calls telling us that, despite all our talk of healthy and right food our prices are too high for, say, retired people. This is not the case today, even though we used to receive many such calls 10 years ago. We monitored the situation in Tatarstan back then, and we received complaints that the difference in prices in 6 rubles is too high. But now this difference is only 2-3 rubles. Back then we were making our first steps, so it was harder and more expensive for us. But now we manage’.
As for Halal menus in the army and in prisons, Mr Gazizov said that the Council worked with ‘Butyrka’ prison. ‘They asked us to grant them opportunity to order Halal food via Internet – you know the prisoners have different opportunities to purchase food, and not only get the prison food. They’ve addressed us to organize Halal food trade in the prison, and we re-directed this demand to our colleagues from ‘Halal Ash’ and asked them to take part in the tender. For now it is all only at the negotiation stage, but I’m sure it will all work out. And I can assure you that the problem will be resolved in the Army as well, as the major part of Muslim servicemen are from the Caucasian Republics, and they are very upright about Islam regulations (you know what it means, they not only claim to be Muslims, they accept all the responsibilities of a practicing Muslim, like Ramadan and so on). They’ll have to resolve the problem in our army sooner or later, as orthodox Muslims there have to eat only the food they can be sure of, while army service requires healthy nourishment and so on. I think the problem will be resolved soon. Unlike prisons, we’ve had no negotiations with the army yet, but we are working on it. We organized special committees to work on that’.
